


Detour

by black_hat_with_bells



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 19:03:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_hat_with_bells/pseuds/black_hat_with_bells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU, where Claire gets kidnapped somewhere in the Season 2 timeline</p>
            </blockquote>





	Detour

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is an old fic, again, but it's been re-written since the first time...it ranged between mehhh and oh boy to ohh...no. So I thought I owed it to myself to redo it. Seriously it has been bugging me for a long time. 
> 
> So redone. 
> 
> Un-beta'd.

Claire stood in the checkout line, gripping a bag of banner materials in one hand and her cell phone in the other. 

She didn't mind the wait, either. The longer, the better.

She wasn't supposed to be out at Target, buying blue markers for the Homecoming Banner. But she was anyway, despite her father's warnings. Maybe it was dumb that she had volunteered to make the banner for her new school, considering how her other banner had ended up. She was under the impression that her father thought it was flat-out strange. As in not-normal. 

But it was such a small, normal thing, and she had learned to cling to those while she still could. She had found out they were going to run again. So...she just started reacting. She had taken the family car without asking. By now, he should have figured out that she wasn't in the house anymore and that she had disappeared. Not spirited away, as seen from the missing car in the garage, but most certainly gone. The phone remained silent.

Frowning, she paid for the banner and made her way to the parking lot. She wasn't stupid. She had seen first-hand how life can change in a second, but she didn't want to spend the rest of it hiding. Her car was still in its space, not burned or lightening-struck. Next stop, drop the banner off at May's house and then say-

A sharp, stabbing pain bit into her shoulder. Her legs gave out from underneath her, and the world faded from sight.

Claire struggled to sit up. Her entire body had that falling-asleep sensation of pins and needles.

"W…where?"

"I wouldn't say she's much of a threat."

A woman with dark sunglasses studied her from the passenger seat. A man was driving. He was non-descript, despite the fact that he was wearing her father's style of glasses. She decided, hazily, that the Company must select their workers from a Walking-Cliché factory that should be burnt to the ground. Behind the glasses, his eyes were deep set and he was balding. Her first instinct, as out of it as she was, had been to exchange an insult. However, the best she could come up with was 'those shoes are a threat' but she wasn't even sure the woman had feet.

She shook her head and tried to find a clear thought.

Lackluster as they were, they were dangerous. They'd take her apart and bury her in a glass box away from her family, all the while having a casual conversation about the weather.

She crossed her arms in an attempt to look together. From the drugs, it felt like there was sawdust in her mind, hot, dry, and empty.

"How did you find me?" she asked, knowing the answer but hoping for a different one.

"Through your classmate. The girl is undergoing serious psychological evaluation as we speak. Nightmares. Constant panic attacks. Unable to walk outside without someone with her because she's thinks a flying man will swoop down from the sky and drop her to her death. She's also afraid of you. It was a bit of tip off."

"Such a sweet girl Bennet's raised," the woman commented.

"Like you can talk. Your father raised you to be a kidnapper."

"We're here to help you, Claire. Obviously, your abilities are beyond you."

She bit her lip and tried to figure out where they were, exactly. Joe, as she had named him, apparently had them on a back road with suicidal turns. As to where, she had no clue.

She moved her fingers, seeing if the feeling was returning to her hands. If she could be patient, it was still possible for her to escape. Whatever they had drugged her with, however, was powerful. She could hardly keep her eyes open.

"Did you know she thinks that you're going to kill her? That one day, when she comes home, you'll-"

"That's enough," Joe interjected. Claire droped her gaze. One action and her life, the one her father had fought for, had fallen to pieces. The numbness of the thing coursing through her was much harder to resist. 

She had to find a way out of this. The car doors would be locked

"He's been behind us for a long time."

She jerked, and looked outside, mentally kicking herself. The sun was half set on the horizon, its eyes half closed. She had to have been out for more than an hour.

"I know."

Claire blinked, trying to pick up the thread of their conversation and failing. It wasn't until the lights stared flashing in the rearview mirror that she turned around, gripping the armrest for support.

She blinked again. It appeared that her stolen car had found her, and was trailing behind her like a lost dog. She shook her head. No, the car looked like it had been through hell and back. It wasn't as if the car thief was rushing to return it while he still had the chance. Plenty of people owned Nissan-Rogues…maybe.

Suddenly, as if reading their minds, the driver switched on the emergency flashers. He sped up behind them, and motioned frantically to a shape beside him. She squinted, not understanding.

"Let him pass," Dark-glasses said, urgently.

"What?"

"His wife is obviously sick."

Through the shadows, Claire could see a person, whose frame was slight and delicate, slumped against the car window, her head bobbing lightly to the bumps in the road. Joe sighed, and pulled to the side. The driver followed them, seemingly by accident. The one-lane road was too narrow to go around, so Claire assumed he had been trying to squeeze past them.

"Oh for—go around me, you idiot," Joe gripped, holding his arm out the window and making cart-wheeling motions.

The Nissan roared past them, rocking their small car in its wake. Claire started to wave frantically at the driver for help but stopped when she saw her school's sticker on the back. The one she had put on herself, in order to prevent her car from looking so old. It was as if she had seen a break through time. The car thief pans her van off to some stupid couple who, apparently, were drifting into the realm of the unwell, the place where Claire, the original owner, was to be spirited away.

"What a nut."

"Oh."

Dark-glasses peered back at her.

"It's nothing," Claire said, crossing her arms again.

"Wife, my ass," Joe muttered.

"Excuse me?"

"No one understands commitment anymore. I'm sure that was just his one night-stand having a drug overdose."

"Charming as ever, Landon."

They fell into silence. She wondered if she should inform them about Mr. Road Rage. If anything, if anything…she fought for lucidity and found an idea. More than an idea. She saw it so clearly in her mind that it was as if someone had taken a picture. When the moment was right—if she had to—she could lunge forward, grab the steering wheel, and drive this car right off the side of these turns.

It would be a long way down.

She couldn't help but wonder if she could do it without hurting them too badly. She moved her fingers again. Better than before. The picture was now developing with sound effects. They would scream, and look at her with wild eyes, and the car would rocket down the side of the hills, sounding like metal in a trash compactor. The woman's dark sunglasses would break.

Claire shivered, feeling cold. Her arms were regaining sensation as well. She gathered up the end of her sleeves, slowly, so she could maintain a good grip on the steering wheel. Her hands alone, she didn't trust.

She breathed, in and out, and prayed for something to take this away.

The moment passed, and she slid to the middle of the backed seat.

"I-I'm going to be sick," she whispered.

"Then be sick," Joe said. Charming indeed.

"I'm serious," she warned them. They had their attention on her, true, but that made this all the more unexpected…or so she hoped. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and counted, feigning a deep-sick stillness.

On the count of five. Then on ten. Then on twenty.

Finally, on the count of a hundred, Claire lunged forward, grabbing madly for the wheel. Dark-glasses blocked her, with surprising ease, and grabbed her wrist with syringe in hand, ready for stabbing.

Instead, Claire never really landed. There was a horrible, world-ending bang, and she realized she had cracked her head on the back seat window and felt, saw, knew only red behind her eyes for a moment. She was shocked, thinking that the woman had powers-probably did, sure, so dumb-and had thrown her across the car.

There was another sound, or sounds, loud, clear, and distinguishable only after a minute. A gunshot and breaking glass, one after another like thunder following lightening. She felt the back of her head and found it was matted down with blood.

The Nissan Rogue was crouched outside the window, pinning them to the side rail like a spider would a fly and looking in with yellow, bright eyes, illuminating everything inside. Another look told her that Joe was not moving. Dark-glasses was struggling to move and her glasses had broken, hanging off the side of her face by her ear. Claire thought it was silly that she just didn't take the stupid things off.

Something shifted, outside, and she saw a tall figure bend near the passenger window, taking casual aim with a gun. The shadow placed the barrel against Dark-glasses head in a motion she would have considered intimate, brushing stray strands of hair out of her face. Killing with kindness.

Glasses moved, quickly, and the gun in his hand seemed to turn an angry red. The man screamed out in pain, and she heard the metallic clatter as the gun hit the pavement. He stumbled back, and darted behind the Nissan. She recognized him by the way he moved.

"S…" Her mouth kept filling up with blood; it was all very unbelievable. She must have bitten down on her tongue. She grabbed Dark-Glasses by the arm, seeing that the woman was going to pursue a monster.

"Sylar," Claire managed to choke out.

She received a wild smile in reply as the woman's face lit up in savage glee. "Oh really. They want him alive, but accidents do happen, don't they?"

Dark-glasses opened the door and slammed it shut, another pointless action in Claire's opinion. The car groaned, sounding like the hull of a sinking ship. She reached down and picked up the gun, also seeming intimate in the motion of this dance. Claire didn't have a clue what the hell was going on. It was as if she was stuck in an old gangster movie, in classic black and red.

But she was getting out. Exit stage left.

As Broken-Glasses stalked around the side of the Nissan, crunching the shards of glass under her shoes, Claire edged up slowly to the front seat. She didn't have the strength to kick out the window on her side. Joe's side was a different story. The bullets had broken the window after going through him. It was unreal that they didn't have bullet proof glass but considering their prey, perhaps it had never been an issue. They should rethink that one.

She didn't look at Joe, couldn't look at him. Once out the window, she'd fall all the way down the side of the jagged hill. From there, she'd run. She put her hand on the door and hissed in surprise. A shard of glass had pierced her palm, and blood welled up there and around it.

Then it hit her. Pain. It was the first time she had ever, ever felt anything more than a dull twinge from any injury. She couldn't heal as quickly from the whatever-the-hell-they-stuck-her-with. 

Claire looked down the dark precipice again. She was already halfway out the window. Fear took a hold of her, like cold hands trying to pull her downwards, and she almost slipped.

At that moment, she caught some dark liquid being flung at Broken-Glasses and an inferno erupted by the Nissan. Claire jerked in surprise. The woman had been a fire starter, like her mother, and the gasoline Sylar had doused her with couldn't have hurt her. It did blind-

A weightless sensation poured into her veins as the car tilted from her movement and started to fall, clipping the guardrail and giving her a grand view of the entire crevice. Joe pinned her halfway out the window, and as the sun turned upside down, Claire wondered if she was going to see anything after death.

Because she hadn't b.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She woke up to the steady hum of an engine and a darkness broken only by fluorescent lights drifting across the roof of a car. There was the sound of cars sailing past, moving together but each one alone, and she could see the line of thin streetlights, the perpetual watchmen.

She waited to remember who she was, where she was, anything, something. And there was nothing, and trying to dredge up a memory from absolutely nothing hurt. There was another set of noises clashing against the sound of the engine. The radio was being changed from station to station, voices running over into voices, and she had the sense that something was very wrong with a person who could stand to listen to it.

Sitting up slowly, she noticed that her clothes were stiff and crusty with a dark color. She touched her shirt, rubbing the material between her fingers. Try as she might, she couldn't make out what the hell was all over her in the faint light. She peeked at the radio and saw that no one was touching the dial at all.

"So she finally decides to rejoin the land of the living."

For one dizzying moment, she looked up and thought that there were eyes—just eyes in the rearview mirror—watching her. She screamed and threw herself against the back seats, hearing an echo of a clanging-banging metal sound in the back of her mind. Those eyes could dissect her, see the lines where she came apart dotted across her body, and now they made her feel inhuman.

"Now, is that any way to greet the man who put you back together again?"

She could see the shadow of his profile, and she didn't know if the fact that the eyes weren't floating alone in the damn mirror made her feel any better.

"I mean, you gave me quite a scare there, Claire," the shadow man said. "It didn't take all the king's men or anything, but it was hell getting your spinal column detached from the steering wheel."

Distantly, she thought she was going into shock, feeling like she was floating away. She wasn't sure.

"I…my spine…"

"Uh-huh," he purred, his eyes curving into a smile. "There was some assembly required. But you healed up so nicely for me."

Claire. Was that her name? It didn't spark anything within her, and at best, it reminded her of an éclair.

"…my spine…seriously?"

He squinted at her. "Yes. Does Polly want a cracker?"

Then it hit her. She had been kidnapped. She was kidnapped and she didn't know who she was. She could be a Polly for all she knew. And somehow, somehow, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw that fact clearly. 

Without warning, he swerved dangerously, lurching across two lanes of traffic to a volley of honking and skidding sounds. She let out a startled 'oh', and was thrown against the side of the car like an astronaut in a shuttle run, about to lose her lunch, about to tumble out the door to the waiting tires below.

He clipped the railing on the exit ramp, and she saw sparks ping against the window.

"Okaypleasedrivebetternow," she begged, thinking they were about to wind up as street pizza for sure.

He laughed, and he had a very deep laugh, and it infuriated her. "Hey, you could have gotten us both killed, ass-…she trailed off. His eyes darted to hers once more, and there was something so consuming in his gaze that she thought, yep, I'm going to be devoured by this man, and I'll hardly notice. "Hole?"

She looked away, and saw that he was carrying her away from the lights and into an area of dark houses with empty windows and mazes of back alleys. They traveled in silence, until he chose a small street to his liking and coasted to a stop. He cut the engine and turned to her, his face masked in shadows. She could read nothing from him. He was blank. Blank, and…there was that echo of frantic metallic clanging again.

She felt like she was nine years old, scared of the shapeless and merciless from the closet, and something was perched on a shelf, ready to kill her if she moved, blinked, thought.

She pressed against the leather of the seat, wishing she could just phase out of the car or something. If only people could do that. The silence spiraled horribly. In it, she noticed a smell. An odd, sweet smell that was familiar but she couldn't quite place it. All she knew was that it was making her sick.

"Look, you can keep the car— I…please let me go. I won't tell anyone. I don't know you. I don't want to know you, I just want to go home."

Wherever that was. 

"Oh sweetie, what have they done to you?" 

She flinched at his change in tone. Oh, hell, his voice was different, as if it was coming from a whole new person. The illusion was similar to a leopard speaking with a voice of a mouse or something, and it would have been comical, had it not been so terrifying.

"Don't you remember me, Claire? Me?" He raised his hand to his chest as if he had been wounded. A mockery of being wounded, actually. Of this, she was sure.

"No." She left it at that.

"It's me. Peter."

That name was like being home. She reached out a hand towards him but stopped short.

"Peter?"

"You remember that name at least. I'm so glad." Only he didn't sound glad at all.

"You're lying."

"Well, you may not remember after your little ordeal, but I'm telling you, it-"

"It doesn't suit you, that name," she said, glaring as fiercely as she could.

He chuckled, and just like that, bled back into his old self. "Okay. Fair enough. If you don't wish for me to be Peter, then I won't be. But I wouldn't give out my real name to just anyone, especially to a girl like you."

"Like me? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Good boys and girls don't wear those colors." He motioned to her shirt. At her confusion, he reached for the lights. "Let's shed some light on this, shall we?"

"No!" she said quickly, not wanting to see him because that would make him real. "No, I've seen the blood on my clothes already." 

"And not a mark on you. What does that mean, pray tell?"

"You hurt me. You did something to me."

"I didn't have to lift a finger. You did that all by your lonesome. So what are our options here, Claire?"

"You're dying to tell me, just tell me," she said, starting to lose her temper. 

Silence. 

"Where are we right now?" she asked.

"Oh, the usual. I'm presumed dead. You're god-knows-where, also running from the law. Looks like we have some time to kill. Tell me…dogs or cats?"

"Excuse me?" Her fingers brushed the edge of the door handle, and she tried her luck. Locked tight.

"Are you a dog person or a cat person? Do you like cats or dogs? Like a really fat cat, or maybe one of those Mexican jumping bean, fluffy kind of dogs? It's a simple question."

"None of your business."

"I'll trade you your last name for an answer," he cajoled, as if this was a reasonable statement.

"Fine. Cat person."

He smiled to himself. "Poor fluffy."

What in the hell? He was completely insane. 

"Okay, your turn. Tell me my last name," she pressed. 

"Oh, please, it's Gray. Your last name is Gray."

"Gray?" she repeated, her brow furrowing. Claire Gray. What an oxymoron. But it did sound like it should mean something to her.

"Don't strain yourself trying to think. You'll have an aneurism. Can't have that." He paused, tilting his head and considering. "Let me have a look at you."

To her horror, the shadow man got out of the car. He was—okay, he was really, really tall. Claire cringed away from the door, and oh, dear God, he was coming around to the backseat. She lunged across the armrest, sliding into the front seat in a record amount of time, and laid her hand on the horn as hard as she could. She spared a look towards the houses, and they remained dark.

The keys, though! They were still in the ignition, and she started the car, only to have the engine turn on itself like a dying animal. She tried again, and this time, she couldn't move the keys an inch. It was as if they had been stuck in concrete blocks while she hadn't been paying attention.

"What the hell?" she hissed.

There was a rap-tap-tap on the window. Claire gripped the steering wheel tightly, frozen. The car door opened and the interior lights turned her shirt brown-rust. That wasn't the only thing it illuminated. She saw that there were rust smears coating the dashboard, the upholstery, and the windows. The window was the worst. There were fingerprints littered everywhere, as if someone had been trying to claw their way out, or maybe just hoping someone other than him would notice their death. In the center of the seat, there was a syringe.

"This isn't happening," she heard herself whisper. That handprint had belonged to someone with small hands, petite hands. Another girl, another time. In the end, with him, it was always the same girl. She was that girl.

"You're right. That happened. And this is about to happen." He leaned against the door casually. "Get out of the car, Claire."

She hated her hands. They trembled uncontrollably. The rest of her was fine, shake-free, and she managed to get out of the car and stand on the pavement below. Claire figured that she had been in the sun during the day ride for a long time because she was still flushed from it, and it made the outside chilly. He gave her no time to think, trapping her small frame with his body against the door. The cold from the metal seeped into her clothes, and she steadied her hands for what they were about to do.

The streetlights cleared up some of the shadows on his face. She gritted her teeth and looked her attacker full in the face. His eyes were deep, endless in their darkness and taking her apart with their intensity. 

She found herself openly staring at him, her lips parted in surprise.

"That wasn't so bad, was it? The hard part is over. I just want to get to know you, help you. If you can believe that."

He traced a line across her forehead with his fingertip. That was the last straw.

She jerked her hand upward, aiming straight for his eyes, his throat, anything that could bleed. He caught her hand easily in midair.

"What were you planning to do, key me to death?"

He squeezed her wrist, but she wasn't about to let those keys go.

"That was the idea, yeah. But I would settle for blinding you. Just a little."

There was a snap, or rather a series of small snaps, as he broke her hand. Through her outrage and pain, she thought it was interesting that it had only taken him one quick twist to do it. She screamed, loudly, and his response was to push her against the car. Her mouth was pressed against his shoulder, muffling her screams.

Claire looked around at the dark houses. Were they the only two people left on earth or something?

She heard him whispering harshly under his breath. At first she thought he was praying but realized he was counting. He was holding her broken wrist gently, and counting. Probably how many bones he had broken. For the insanity of it all, it was spellbinding, his intensity, and the higher he went into his counting, the more enraged he seemed to become.

There was another snap, quiet and less horrible than the first sounds. He stepped back. Her hand was fine. Perfectly fine.

"How…what did you do?" she asked, wide-eyed. Of course, with how things were falling to pieces, she may have imagined that he had broken her hand. Yes, or else this man really wasn't human.

"You know, you really should have waited until that little cocktail was out of your system before you took that plunge. That took too long. Far too long. The previous delay has affected your memory since your neurons were still blocked. And there's possibly more damage." Suddenly, he was seething. "You nearly broke it. Just like that, nearly threw it all away."

"Right, right," she muttered, thinking of her hand. "Someone's called the police by now, genius. They heard me, and the police should be on their way."

"Ah, yes, the police. The boys in blue have been looking for you. You see, you're a killer. Just like me. I was trying to find you. To save you."

Claire was so unsure, she...

"I would have remembered killing someone."

Oh right. What if she...what if there was a possibility--

He pushed her back in the car somehow--magically--freakishly, and just as freakishly, she didn't scream. 

***

Claire noticed something even stranger than him pushing her into a car. There was a shard of metal in her left calf. She pulled it out cautiously and hid it in the seat. He didn't seem to catch it. 

"Have you ever heard of the myth of Koschei the Deathless?"

Claire jumped and stared at him, wide-eyed. 

"Oh, well, you wouldn't remember if you had. Sorry, I keep forgetting." He smiled.

"Koschei, out of fear of death—"

"Hence the name?" she asked dryly. 

He glared, and she looked down, not wanting to get in a fight with the psycho. "… hid his soul in all these objects. My old acquaintance has hidden his heart in things around him."

She heard a ticking, and saw that he had flipped the turn signal.

"In the modern version, this man lives for everything but himself. His work. Mostly his work. Then there are his children. He lives through them, controls them, but the catch twenty seven is that they make all his actions justified, good even, in the eyes of everyone else. Just because of the little children. One in particular is his Achilles' heel that he paints with a bulls-eye that fucking glows in the dark, just to spite me. And if I take the bait, then he gets to crucify himself over it. Yes, Claire, he thinks he's just so special."

His knuckles had turned white on the wheel. She wouldn't have been surprised if this guy believed the whole purpose of children was to spite him and him alone. It should have been disgusting, grotesque. And it was all that, but she couldn't help feeling a twinge of pity. Thinking the whole procreated world was built against you had to make every breath sheer agony. But then again, she had no idea what he was about to do. 

"But in the end, the cross really is just a stump of wood."

"Or maybe he really loves them without all…that," she pointed out.

"Of course he does. I'm sure a dogcatcher can come home and love his puppy, too."

He coasted into a parking lot, and her heart stopped.

"You've got to be kidding." The police station wasn't brightly lit but Claire was sure a spot light was about to shine down from a helicopter at any minute. He was completely insane. 

"It is the last place they'd look."

"...that actually makes a little sense," she allowed. 

"I wanted to see if your wanted poster is up by now. You coming?"

This was her chance. 

"...Okay," she said. "I hope it's a good picture."

"It hasn't sunk in yet, has it? The police are looking for you. I heard your name replayed over the radio after every commerical break while you were out cold."

"Then what did I do, exactly? I mean, telling me should just take a second."

"It would be better to remember on your own. Mentally speaking…" he said, carefully. "You are very, very special." Before she could move, he captured her hand. She hated that, for her hands still fluttered in time with her heartbeat. They seemed to delight him, her trembling hands, because he didn't still them by holding them tighter."I could break your hand all day and night, and you'd just fix yourself. Physically, you have no imperfections. A flawless design, with no odd variables. It's fantastic. What do you think one could do with your ability?"

Claire knew better than to believe in fairytales. With what she had seen from him, with the radio and the hearing, he was the special one. But that ability was a horror show waiting to happen.

"I could walk through fire and not get burned." 

He paused, looking at her strangely, as if she had been speaking in a foreign tongue. She didn't know wehre that had come from. 

"That's one way to put it. Are you sure I should continue?"

"Go ahead, I'm a big girl." And you're a big liar. " I can take it."

"You could hold someone down in a fire and not be burned. You could drive a car into a wall with a person of your choice inside of it. You'd walk away. They wouldn't."

"N…" Yes. She remembered putting her foot down on the accelarator, stomping it down, and a pale face screaming besides her, strappd in for the ride. The face didn't matter; the feeling did.

"I knew there was something like that inside of you," he said, clasping her hand as if binding a contract. "Call it intuition, but I sensed it in the way you work. Your reactions are every action are…interesting to say the least. But aren't you the victim, really? Having to endure anything and everything with no marks to show for it, with a power most people would kill to get. Your family took advantage of your situation. Let's not go further into that. The police are looking for you, but they don't know exactly what they are looking for. And when they find you, a government agency with no initials will lock you in a cage like an animal and experiment on you."

She shook her head, refusing that past. He was planting thoughts in her head, is all. Hopefully not literally, at any rate. Besides, next he'll want her to believe that he rescued her from this agency, and he wasn't exactly a knight in shining armor, either. "With the probes that they borrowed from the Martians when they visited, huh. Yikes."

He looked mildly offended. Well, mildly was putting it…mildly. "I'm telling the truth. And with you as the patient, well…I wouldn't be surprised if one of your rescuers decided to play doctor."

"Hey, you lied about your name," Claire said, pulling her hand away. "First strike and you're out."

"What's in a name?"

"Everything." 

"I agree."

Okay. Right. 

"So out of curiosity, my so-called ability is to hurt other people and waltz away."

"Actually, you can help others, if you tried. Hey, you fixed me. That counts for something."

"What-?"

Great, he was out the door, and there wasn't a shoe in sight. He watched her with that odd half smile, savoring something, and then the door let go. Rather than scramble out, she practically tumbled out.

Claire hurried to her feet.

"Time to face your destiny," he said. 

"Wait, give me my shoe back. Come on, cough it up." She held out her hand and waited, like a mother would when she demanded her child spit out the gum he had been chewing during church.

"Oh, that. I assume your shoe was on your foot."

"Well?"

"Look, I couldn't find it. It didn't seem to matter at the time."

"Fine, hide it, then. So, I'm going to go into the police station now."

Claire started across the parking lot, with him trailing behind her. Suddenly it hit her. Was this safe? Because he could technically kill all the police in the station if he could move her body back in a car. She slowed down, horrified. 

"I'm not so sure..."

Damn it. 

"Is it really so hard to believe that you are a killer?"

"Yeah, yeah, it is."

"It's not like I blame you. It's so easy to slip into, and nobody told me. That's why I never thought about it, either."

She did remember that screaming face in the car. Was it true? Was she actually a killer? 

He caught her arm. "You'll need this." Something was pushed down on top of her head, and she thought, a little hysterically, that it was a ski mask. It turned out to be only a harmless baseball cap.

"Ladies first." He opened the door, motioning for her to go in, and if she didn't, then the police would notice them. She walked in.

She oscillated between relief and disappointment. The fluorescent lights inside this place made everything stark and cold. It was possible that people could exist outside her pain and terror, and go on with their lives. But what had she expected, the world to stop?

"Like clockwork."

He tapped her on the shoulder and pointed. First she looked at him, consumed by curiosity. What would a shadow man look like in real life time? He did lose a certain something, seeming to shrink without pitch blackness around him. Perhaps it was the inch deep circles under his eyes. It was like being afraid of the crouching figure in the corner of the room, only to turn on the lights and find out it was your favorite jacket in a bundle. That incidently sprang to life and put you in a strangle hold, anyway. 

Then Claire looked at the buletin board and frowned.

"I don't see anything. Unless you think I bear a resemblance to that bearded guy."

"God, you are short."

He placed a finger under her chin and tilted her head up. Her face stared back at her.

"Person under suspicion…is that what they're calling it nowadays? Have to say, that's not the picture I would have chosen for you. A cheerleading murderer sends out mixed signals."

She didn't much care about that. What she cared about was that there was no air. Her face swam in front of her as she tried to learn how to breathe again and failed. Person under suspicion in the disappearance. Person under.

Huge, black dots appeared before her eyes, seeming to eat up the light in the room. Maybe they were in her head, why she couldn't remember.

She must have swayed backwards because he grabbed her suddenly and ushered her out the door. Something was hissing, and she wasn't sure why the earth was shaking.

"Breathe, breathe, you little bitch, you don't get to quit on me that easily!"

Ah, it was him. He was seething again, in and out of her vision, and he was a fury, shaking her from side to side. Possibly he was about to break her arms. More than that. He was afraid.

Then she got it. She had just tipped off the police. Oh my god. 

She was thrown into the backseat of the car, and before she knew it, they had spun out onto the main highway. She thought she heard something heavy slid around in the trunk, and her windpipe narrowed to what felt like the circumference of a dime in response. Blue lights reflected in the windows.

"G-god."

"Just breathe."

He rolled down the window and stuck a hand out. For one crazy moment, she thought he was casually motioning for the police to go around. Then he stopped the car. Claire struggled to sit up, and managed to see a squad car go sailing by, unable to stop, and heading into oncoming traffic. She closed her eyes.

Something pushed against the back of her throat, and there was a flare of red pain. She gasped. She could breathe again. In its place, there was an assortment of other pains. She had just gotten someone killed. 

"So much for keeping a secret, huh? Oh well," he said. 

They were already spiraling back towards the expressway, so there was no time for her to turn around and see if there were any survivors. All of that…over her freakout.

"Good thing I froze the video cameras in the parking lot beforehand, or else I'd have to stop this little adventure early."

"How could you? You could have just gotten away…I…why did you do that?"

"Claire, Claire, Claire," he sighed. "I can't help faulty breaks. It happens."

At her look, he changed his tune. "You shouldn't have caused such a little scene. And after I had just told you about involving people in our business."

"He may be okay."

"When their heart stops, it means they're dead. Usually."

He smiled at her in the mirror.

"What can I say, Claire, you're a heartbreaker."

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The light from the golden arches did little to cheer Claire up. It just was a reminder of how close she was to safety and how far away. 

If it was safety. 

She could run while he was in the fast food line, waiting patiently among all those people. Hell, there was a pregnant woman right in front of him, and she had no clue. The car doors were ostensibly unlocked.

She had to stay.

Not because she had nowhere to go until she was sure...she wasn't wanted by the law. But to be safe, she slipped the shard of metal out of the seat and placed it in her pocket. 

As if he felt her polar negativity, he opened the restaurant door for the mother-to-be. It was sick. 

"I've figured it out. Panic-attack." 

"Er…" She struggled to hold on to the burden while he slid into the backseat. "Is that like a code word for a happy meal?"

Not saying a word, he took out a syringe from the pocket of his jacket.

She pressed against the door, cringing. "What are you going to do?"

"…you're afraid of a shot. That is absurd, you do know."

"That's the one you used before." He nodded, closing the distance between them. "Is it clean?"

"I washed it."

"In McDonald's. In the restroom." He frowned, looking down at the syringe.

"You have a point." Reaching over the console, he took the cigarette lighter and held the needle to it, turning it a dark, angry red. Familiar somehow.

"Please don't do it. Don't stick that in my arm."

"Please, please, please, and hardly a thank-you in between. I should have gotten you a kid's meal. Maybe you'd like a toy with it."

Grabbing her arm. Rolling up her sleeve. "This is so gross," she said. An understatement on just about everything. 

"You're one to talk. I've been in your room before." That got her attention.

"Was I in it?" she mocked. 

In response, he jabbed the needle right to what felt like bone. She clenched her fists but refused to cry out.

"It was the stereotypical little girl's room. I did like the touch with the teddy bears. A little excessive, a little demented." She felt the heat from his body, and didn't know what to think or do. And she didn't dare look at the syringe. "Either you have a severe Peter Pan complex, or there's a family undercurrent that would make even Nabokov gouge his eyes out."

Claire jerked her arm away, hurting herself from the needle still in her arm.

"You can keep that after I'm through," the shadow man said lightly and pulled the needle free from her skin. "If it makes you feel better, I'll go with the Peter Pan idea. The burden of growing up isn't in your reality."

"It certainly isn't yours." She was scared to death. And she couldn't stop fighting. 

"Stop it, Claire," he ground out, pushing the syringe down with his thumb. She had hit a nerve. She watched her blood shoot into his arm with a look of defiance.

"You saw me, and took me away from my family. Then you did something to me. Did you do the same to her?"

Claire motioned to the seat. 

"Don't flatter yourself. If you didn't have something I wanted, then I wouldn't even look at you." 

She didn't believe him. It didn't make her feel better. His hands were glowing that sick yellow, some sort of--power, and she felt pain run along the course of her arm from the proximity. 

"I was so afraid I had lost this ability," he muttered. "The thought of you was the only thing that kept me going in the jungle."

Claire looked from his hands to his face and back again, feeling nothing. She took a sip of her drink and then caved, having to know.

"Be honest with me. Am I dead and is this all a sick nightmare?

"Do you think you're dead?" The glow dimmed from his hands, leaving only McDonald's to light the way.

"You said you had to pick me up in pieces. That's sounds pretty dead to me."

"We've been over this."

"I can't believe...it, any of it-"

He pinched her arm, hard. She gasped at the pain and pulled back.

"Okay, a simple no would have been fine." He couldn't do things simple. And she thought about it. They were sitting still, and there was that shard of metal in the seat. If she could get to it...

She averted her eyes and sipped her drink. Killer or not, she'd get away from him. She had to get away, identity or not. 

"No is always enough. On the other hand, pain is never enough. So it fits perfectly with your question. Besides, if you were dead, jigsaw girl, then what would that make me?"

"I don't know, an angel of death?

He drew back. "What would make you say that? Of all possible things?"

"It just fits." For the obvious reason on the dashboard. 

"It should fit. I know this." He seemed in pain again, leaning towards her, solemnly, depending on her as if he was in a confessional. In this situation, she was the perfectly harmless confidant. She didn't mind being in pieces so much; she'd quilt herself back together and comfort him, if she could.

"I've been making myself in that image for a long time. There are pieces of special things just waiting for me to make them transcend, to form the ideal design. If I wasn't supposed to do this, then why can I see it so clearly? And now things are just repeating, playing the same note over and over again. I don't think it's supposed to do that."

"A lot of things do that," Claire pointed out, getting him talking. "Like the sun? Rising and setting? If I remember right," she said. Talking made her feel braver. This was good. 

"But we're the ones going in circles. Oh, we like to think it's the sun, even though we know otherwise. Imagine, feeling the earth actually circle the sun. That's what I feel like, everyday. And it's all meaningless in its repetition. It's not noticeable!"

"I would notice if the sun didn't come up," she said. 

"Even if you don't know who you are and are fearing the very worst? Like you can't escape your nature?"

That did get her attention. 

"The thing about being a part of a design is that parts are interchangeable, replacable. I find that part at least comforting." 

Claire met his eyes. "It sounds lonely. 

Then it hit her. What she had to do. 

To make her point, she reached out and put her hand against his chest. After the fact, she thought her hand might be broken again. However, there was nothing she could lose. No family to miss, no friends to mourn. He looked down at her hand, with clinical detachment. Figuring out what reaction went with this action. He was his own analogy; everything on the outside was lost in translation.

It wasn't working. 

She began to pull away, but he put his hand over hers, to keep her in place. She felt his heartbeat; it was going awfully fast.

"What about feelings?" she continued. "Sure, you may make them see you, but don't you think other people feel the same way?"

"It takes a special type of person to actually do something about 're a cat person. I'm a people person." He grinned at the thought. "I understand people. For instance,I know that you might have even been a good girl if I had always been right besides you with your life in my hands. And who said anything about need? Why, Claire, do you want me to care about you? Or is it…you need me to care about you."

She gasped as he pulled her into his lap, trapping her against him. 

Okay, so maybe, he was mad that his doll grew a personality contrary to what was there before. Claire wondered what he would do if he realized that she had known what to do to keep him happy and her breathing…and had failed to act upon it.

Only this punishment was not what she had expected. But he wasn't going further. Instinctively, she realized he was the one who was stymied. He was essentially grabbing at her, making a show. He kept his lips on her forehead, and his hands carefully placed, never altering his performance. For him, this was riskque, always taking and never giving.

This was her distraction. 

This was her chance for an escape. 

So she slowly moved her head up, pretending to pull away—which he had expected—then kissed him. He opened his mouth against her lips in surprise, and she took full advantage, running her tongue across his top lip and kissing harder, sweeping her tongue into his mouth. She shifted in his lap. 

Then suddenly, his hands that were still placed under her shirt got either really hot or really cold. She hissed, shock coursing through her system, and it did hurt, but it didn't feel entirely bad. It sent thrills and tingles along her body, overriding every nerve with hot cold, cold hot. So, her skin? Burnt. So, it was healing. 

"Um…I'm sure…well, that will fix itself," he said. Awkwardly.

Something does get through to him, and he was human. That meant he could be taken down.

So that meant there was a chance. She had that shard. 

So. 

Here she goes. 

"Lie down," she translated. Dominating and hoping it worked, hoping-

He was so flustered, he was not even paying attention. He was just staring at her. So, she was doing this.

"You know, it would be a great time to tell me your name," she whispered. "If you don't, I'll call you something else. Anything I choose."

"You've already guessed my name."

She waited. 

"It's Gabriel."

“Well, I’m sorry, Gabriel,” Claire said. “Looks like you were right about me.” 

And with that, she took the shard in her hand and plunged it into his neck. It wasn’t easy...well, maybe it was. She didn't look as he grabbed his neck, or try to listen to the sound of pain, she just flung herself to the nearest door and pushed it open.

She hit the ground running. Because even if he was right, and she was wanted, and was a horrible person, it wasn't right. And she wouldn't die for it or anyone.

Claire ran into the store and yelled, "Someone, call the police!" 

She didn't have to worry about the people, several were already filing out of the restaurant in a hurry at the sight of the blood. The manager in the red hat obliged quickly. 

And then something ironic--and just her luck-- happened. 

She remembered. All of it. It was like suddenly her mind caught up, as if any injury had been displaced completely. Her real name and her fake name and her family and friends--Jackie-

"Sylar," she whispered and turned around in horror mingled with disbelief. She had gotten him, she had--

And in the parking lot, the car had disappeared.


End file.
